The sun is slipping over the horizon, painting the sky in streaks of orange and lavender. I’d forgotten how much I liked it at this time of day, growing up. I liked a lot of things back then, though, when the future was simply a highlight reel of everything I wanted and something extra, something magic I knew existed but hadn’t yet had myself. When did I fucking lose that optimism, that desire? And how did it take me so long to notice it was gone?
My mother is telling me about the book club she’s joined and how much she misses it here as I shrug off my jacket and move to the back window. Lucie’s sitting cross-legged in the grass, her hair twisted high on her head in a messy bun.
“Did anyone buy the place next door?” my mom asks out of nowhere, and I feel like I’ve been caught at something, as if she somehow knew where my head was. To be fair, though, my head is there a troubling percentage of the day, so the odds were in her favor.
“Yeah. A single mom with twins.”
Sophie runs to Lucie with the toy she and Henry were fighting over. Lucie hands it back to her, and even from a distance I can tell Sophie is pissed about it. For some reason it makes me want to laugh.
“Poor thing. That place was falling apart when Ruth was there. I can’t imagine what it’s like now.”
“Her nephew should have fixed it up,” I growl, though it’s Lucie I’m thinking of more than Ruth. “Or bought her a new house. How the hell could he do so little for her?”
My mother sighs. “Ruth lectured me on self-sufficiency the one time I asked if I could borrow an egg. She wouldn’t have accepted help if her life depended on it.”
I think of Lucie refusing the advance on her salary when she clearly needed it and insisting later that she didn’t need help paying for a lawyer. She may be more like her aunt than she realizes.
“So how are you?” my mother asks. “Any news about the merger?”
Lucie is on her hands and knees now, pretending to bury the toy Sophie gave her. Henry isn’t smiling, exactly, but he looks amused nonetheless. I kind of want to walk down there, though I’ve got no excuse for it. “Nothing new. We’re on track to have it all happen late summer or early fall.”
“You sound...different. In a good way. What’s going on?”
She wants to hear that something has changed—that I’m working less, that I’ve heard from Kate—though she no longer asks and neither of those things is true. “Nothing’s changed,” I reply.
Henry runs by Lucie and she turns toward him, laughing as she pulls him into her lap, pressing her lips to the top of his head. And in response, there’s a rustling in my chest.
All that optimism I once had, all the things I wanted from life and gave up on...Lucie reminds me they were ever there in the first place.
And that’s what’s changed: she’s making me want those things again.
It’s probably for the best that I’m leaving California for good.
15
LUCIE
I’m too excited about the seventh floor to keep my thoughts to myself. I’ve only waited thirty minutes on Monday morning before I’m standing at his office door with my laptop in hand.
His gaze runs over me like a finger, lingering at points along the way—mouth, hips, legs. “I assume you’re here to hit me up for something wildly impractical?”
“Not impractical at all. Your company needs a break area, and that disgusting cafeteria doesn’t count.”
“I don’t suppose you’re talking about a free break area. Of course you’re not. Fine, what ridiculous shit do you want?”
I raise my laptop. “Can I show you?”
He sighs, pointing to the small table in the corner. “If you must.”
I take a seat and open the presentation, trying to ignore his heat, his smell, the rough slide of his palm over his pants. “This is what other companies are doing,” I begin. “Google has an ice rink. Their employees play—”
“We are not Google,” he replies firmly. “And I’m not putting in a rink.”
“I know. I figured I’d horrify you before I went to more low-key solutions.”
His lips tug upward, a quarter of a smile. “Did Mark give you primers on how to handle me?”
“No. I just know how to deal with men.” I didn’t intend for it to be a double entendre, but given the way his eyes dip to my mouth, he seems to have taken it as one. My knee brushes against a hard thigh as I cross my legs under the table and there’s a flash of something in his face—something hungry—that steals my breath. No matter how boring I’ve found sex to be in the past…I suspect he’d be different.
“The seventh floor,” I reply, swallowing. “It’s, uh, sitting empty.”
He tenses, the light in his eyes dimming. “We had to cut expenses.”
It can’t be the whole story. Whatever that space was costing him, it was minor relative to TSG’s budget. But my purpose here isn’t to quibble over the decisions he made in the past…it’s simply to fix them. “The difference in utility costs since you closed the seventh floor are negligible, and this is what it could be.” I turn the laptop to show him the rough drawing I created online—ping-pong on one side, a small coffee bar on the other, tables in the center.
He frowns. “That looks like a magnificent place for my employees to fuck around instead of working.”
His reaction doesn’t surprise me. I’d have died of shock at this point if he hadn’t shit all over the idea. “Caleb, people care about work-life balance, whether or not you approve. If you’re going to force them to come into the office, you’ve got to make it palatable.”
He groans, leaning his head back against the chair. “I’ll consider it. And in the meantime, I’m signing you up to speak about the walking program at this thing. We need to rehabilitate our image a little.” He slides a flyer toward me.
The Northern California Technology Consortium. The name, the glossy paper, the pops of royal blue—it all screams important and intimidating. It makes me want to hide under a desk until it’s over.
“Present it? You mean, to people?”
A single brow raises. “That’s usually how presentations work, yes. It would be very good press for us.”
I picture a room full of people far smarter than I am, tearing apart the program, asking questions I can’t answer, making me feel stupid. I don’t even know what I’d say. Sure, the building feels more lively: there’s trash talking in elevators, across divisions, and this week, the call center had the most miles and their office got toilet-papered by another team. It was probably not great for productivity, but people have been laughing about it ever since. I’m not sure I can tell a roomful of executives that one team toilet-papering another is progress, however. “Couldn’t I just give you the data?”
He tilts his head, observing me. “You’ve done public stuff before. Weren’t you, like, the Papaya Queen or something?”
“Your grasp of our state’s produce is surprisingly weak. Yes, I used to do beauty pageants, but that was different.”
“How?”
I stare at my hands. “Beauty pageants don’t involve having your ideas criticized or being asked questions you can’t answer.” I got criticized plenty at home, though—my mother laughed when I told her I was entering and said I didn’t stand a chance. Proving her wrong only made things worse.
“There’s nothing to be scared of. Anyone willing to attend a session on a walking program has already swallowed the Kool-Aid. They want their employees all holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’, same as you.”
“Yes, you sound super accepting of what I’m trying to do with my hand-holding and singing ‘Kumbaya.’”
He grins. “It’s a lecture I’d avoid like the plague. But that’s just it…people only go to a breakout session if they’re open to the topic. And I’ll go over it with you in advance. You must realize no one there will be a bigger asshole than me.” He leans back in his chair with a grin.
Ah, there’s that dimple. I’d agree to anything he asked when that dimple appears.
“True,” I agree. “No one could possibly be a bigger asshole than you.”
He laughs. Somehow, I knew he would.
I take another look at the flyer. “You know what would really make my presentation exciting? If I could tell them about our new break room.”
His jaw falls. “Are you actually trying to blackmail me into agreeing to that?”